Nothing prepared calitown.com for what we see as the local food vendor pushed her cart past where we stand, on this particular day. Soon enough, she makes a stop a few metres away from the gate of a three-star hotel, six poles from our position, off Calabar’s ever busy Marian Road. Whoever the vendor was calling, she enjoyed more than an acquaintance with the person because the smile on her face as she mouthed words into her cellphone, was not wry. Minutes after, a very beautiful lady with a sophistication that is effortless, comes out of the hotel and approaches her, smiling. They talk for a while before she pays the vendor who in turn hands her a food flask. Two other well toned ladies, one with a well made tatoo on her left arm, approach the woman and engage in the same ‘ritual’ like the first lady. We count three more exquisite ladies get food from the vendor before we decide to find out “what’s gwan”, like Nigerian reggea act, Ras Kimono, will ask.
The information takes several days before it comes in. Sources need assurances that what we reveal will not point directly at them and calitown.com gives such assurances before it is revealed that the ladies we see are the latest dimension in the flesh trade; beautiful, educated, complex, expensive, greedy, sleazy and diabolical.
First we want to know where they come from and our source in the hotel tells us in dexterous pidgin English that, “these chicks dey ever enter town, na from outside Calabar dem dey from come”. When they do come in, calitown.com learns, it is on a well set out mission, complete with the trappings of a well rehearsed script. They take up residence in posh hotels and target not just men, but the many top level government and private sector individuals who often are in Calabar for one organised function or the other. It is a network that does not start and end with the ladies, it goes far and above what we may have imagined, up until now and this is authoritative, as our investigations show.
First, the ladies have informants around Calabar who keep a close tab on social and official functions with above average guests. “It is these informants who tell them when to come to Calabar and play ball”, one source tells us. He continues, “I have even heard one of them brag that all she needs is a seat by any of these men and it is done”. It is a reference to the other ‘wing’ of this unfolding saga that we stumble on.
On Calabar bound flights, these ladies pay extra cash for passenger information on the flight manifest. It is this information that guides their seat ‘positioning request’ on the plane, calitown.com gathers. Those who allot such seats on the flights, get tipped and are often kept on a tipping roll so the ladies can be accomodated on dry days. Armed with good looks, a ‘pleasant’ personality and some ‘African science’, the ladies prey on and trap men in a lust nest, peeling cash at will off the men preyed upon. The part that should make anyone shiver is the ‘African science’ angle of this (odd) endeavour. With these on their side, the ladies name outrageous sums and are paid same by men unknowingly trapped and compromised by the efficacy of ‘local’ engineering.
Matter of factly, calitown.com is told by our source that, “most of these places wey dey talk say dem be church and prayer house, na dem dey give the girls wetin dem dey take turn the men head collect money. Some pastors dey even come here to give them anointing materials”. It is a revelation that indites these ‘men’ of God at our disposal, ridicules their warped religious inclinations and exposes them for who they are, a fraud.
“Wetin we come see again be say, when dem don hold man like that, dem dey collect am money carry pursue other girls”, our source tells us. It is another dimension to this whole drama; the Lesbian angle. We hear from our source that most nights, some of the ladies hang out at one upscale lounge on Marian road, buy expensive wine and spirits, attract to themselves a consenting bevy of females and make their pick or even picks for the ensuing tryst. “Some days, dem go just dey room the whole day and different girls go just dey enter their rooms comot. Sometime sef, if anoda girl dey inside, the one wey just come go siddon for reception dey wait as if na interview dem come”, we hear again.
Calabar sure has an ambience that is welcoming and pulls in all sorts of people, including this brood, agile in between the legs and ‘feasting’ on all flesh, male or female. The attraction of these women to Calabar is mercantile and “if na only dem, conferences for dey everyday… na so dem dey take chop” our source concludes.
The world we now live in, na prostitution be this abi?
No be small thing oh, if na so dem dey carry chop…na wa oh.